Decay, Renew

I’ve always approached fall in the Pacific Northwest with a bit of dread. Last fall, though, something was different. Perhaps I’ve lived through enough winters here that I’ve acclimated. Perhaps it’s that I turned 40 last year and have somehow started to develop a more mature outlook.

Regardless, there was something new this year in my response to fall. The usual darkness was there – what Melville describes as “a damp, drizzly November in my soul” – but there was something else as well.

As I spent fall photographing leaves hanging off branches, vines brittle and breaking, and bare branches reaching into the sky, it became clear to me that the gloom of this season is not an intrusion, but an essential part of the year. Just as leaves fall off the trees and turn into food for next year’s growth, so too is my internal gloom a part of the cycle that I need to go through, to feed my own growth in my own spring.